Note: This post is followed up here

In the public area between the apartment-blocks in Beijing you can often find small parks. These parks often contain these kind of contraptions:

At first I was sure that they are simply children’s playgrounds, but it appears that they are actually meant for adults. There seems to be some special fund in Beijing dedicated for erecting public “exercise parks” so that people could keep in shape. Here is an example of how one of these is used:

My window overlooks one of these parks (the one I’ve just photographed), so every morning/evening I can see many adults - young and old, male and female - using these to exercise. In addition I often see in the mornings, in an open area to the side, a group of older women learning some kind of dance. I feel that these are quite nice ideas, and demonstrate China’s attitude towards health.

Another example of this attitude towards health can also be seen in those parks; I’ve seen a few booths with volunteer doctors/nurses which, free of charge, do a basic checkup on you - blood pressure, weight and so on - and then give you some health advice. I wonder whether these types of things can be seen only in well-off Beijing or in all of China.

Ten years ago Hu Jun, Lin’s cousin, was motorbiking through the border area between Hebei province and Inner Mongolia along with two of his friends. This area is a raised plateau (about 1900m high) of grasslands spotted by villages, and the population is partly Chinese and partly Mongolian. They had looked for a place to spend the night and ended up at a house belonging to a poor family which doubled as a guesthouse, where they were given food and a place to sleep. The next day, before leaving, they each handed the family 2 yuan (a modest sum) for their expenses, which the family refused to accept. Hu Jun and his friends thought that they had offended with too small an amount, but the family was stubbornly refusing the money and it was too late to try and give more. As they left the house and passed through the village center, they found all the villagers assembled and coming towards them. This scared them, as they had thought the villagers had gotten together to beat them up for not paying money for their stay, but as it turned out the villagers had simply assembled to “send them off” and wish them farewell.

Ten years later Hu Jun, Lin and I arrived to the same small village. Hu Jun had, since the first visit, been there several time and they had immediately recognized him and warmly welcomed us. During these last ten years local tourism has risen and the family had profited from it along with the rest, and had erected a new building housing several small guest rooms. Each room consists of a large (about king-sized) bed which is meant for four people, with not much room for anything else.

The beds themselves are quite unique (in my opinion): Each bed is hollow and actually serves as a sort of furnace. Firewood or coal is inserted through a hole in front and you sleep on top of all of the warm contraption, with the fire burning inside. Since the place is pretty far north and in a high altitude, a bed of this type is a necessity (or at least a luxary?) during winter. The fact that the room is small and four people sleep in the same bed also contributes to saving warmth.

After being given food - thrice as much as we could possibly eat - we asked if we could ride their horse. They gave us both their horse and a horse belonging to their neighbour, which we took to the wide open grasslands next to their village. There we just rode around until it became late (or in my case - until my muscle cramps were too painful). During Hun Jun’s past few visits they had never taken any money from him, and this time was no exception, so were had to literally force some money into their hands (apart from the expensive food I think that they had also paid their neighbour for use of her horse).

At some early point of our stay they had noticed that we had brought a camera. Since they have no camera of their own, they asked to have their picture taken with us and if we could later send them the picture (by mail, as they have no computers). We had also taken some pictures of our own, here are a few:

It’s common knowledge that the Chinese government keeps its population on a relatively tight leash, and this can also be noticed when it comes to use of the Internet. Most of you have probably heard about the Golden Shield (AKA “The Great Firewall”), a nationwide firewall which blocks access to various “malicious” sites outside of China. It seems that there are several more regulations, some of them more annoying than otherse.

One of these regulation is that all public internet access places (such as the one I am writing from right now) ask for an identification (ID card / passport) which is recorded down in their logs. Thus, it is possible to track, in hindsight, who performed a certain malicious action. Another regulation, one very frustrating for me, is that they cannot allow you to transfer any files to the public access computer. In my case this means that although I’ve bought a new digital camera a while back, I still have no way of uploading the pictures I’ve taken. I’m going to upload a few from someone’s house today, but don’t expect to see many pictures in the near future.

p.s. much of the internet filtering is automatic and based on automatically blocking sites with certain keywords in their text. This means that if you respond here with the wrong sort of comments, especially to this post (which practically “invites” them) I might be blocked from my own site. So please don’t.

I know that the following has been said many times before by many other people, but I feel a need to comment about some Chinese habits regarding food. It seems to me that, in Chinese’s eyes, inviting someone to eat is one of the “basic” forms of hospitality. This can be done at home but is most often done in a restaurant. Now, eating in the restaurant has a few differences from what I’m used to back in Israel (and back in the West, for that matter):

The first difference is that, typically, in China, the meal isn’t on a dish-per-person basis as in common in the west, where usually every person gets a plate with a main course and some side dishes on it. Instead, a bunch of dishes are ordered and are all shared by everyone. Sometimes people transfer food from the big dishes into small “personal” plates, but often the food is just eaten directly from the central plates.

The second difference is drinks. It seems to me that the most popular drink to accompany food is beer. As I remember writing somewhere long ago, Chinese beer is typically weak (about 2-3% alcohol), typically cheap and typically drunk often and in large quantities. Following beer, common options are tea (the tea served during meal is relatively “plain” tea) or just plain boiled water, served hot. Cold water is often carried around in bottles but not usually drunk during meals (at least as far as I could see).

The third difference is quantities. Actually I think this is more an observation on Chinese hospitality than on Chinese eating habits, but whenever I happen to be eating with Chinese they tend to order obscene amounts of food. There is almost always way too much food for us, but to their credit, at the end of the meal they usually ask to take home the leftovers. These are packed in white dispensable food-containers which all the restaurants seem to have. The Chinese consider their Ultimate Responsibility making their guest eat and drink as much as possible so they either keep urging their guest to eat more or just use their own chopsticks to take food from a dish and put it in their guest’s plate. Sometimes it seems that the entire meal is a complex struggle in which the hosts look for excuses to feed the guest, while the guest tries to avoid getting more food shoved into him. One of their “straight out of the book” tricks is asking you whether some dish is good. If your answer is positive, they’ll make you eat some more of that dish. If your answer is negative, they’ll be offended that their hospitality is lacking and might order some more dishes to make it up for you. I found that the best way out of this trap is a non-commitive “not bad”.

This bizzarre form of hospitality is not limited to food, but extends to drinks too - especially beer. Once your cup reaches somewhere around the 2/3-full level, someone will probably grab the bottle and top it off for you. Every now and then someone will raise his glass in a spontanious toast to you, and you are expected to do the same (and of course drink from it). Sometimes he’ll drink it all at once and then display the empty glass to you. You are expected to do the same. Drinking beer involves a second, simultanious struggle in which you try not to overdrink, so sometimes it can be a good idea to avoid it altogether.

An interesting anecdote to end this post: sometimes, when you pour someone else’s drink, he will respond by placing his hand on the table and tapping it three time with his middle finger. I was told a story which is supposed to explain this habit: In ancient times there was an emperor who used to wear plain cloths and go mingle with the common people. When he was eating with his advisors he would sometimes pour their tea, an action to which they should respond by bowing to him. But they can’t bow as this would “blow his cover”, so they devised a replacement in which they perform this finger-tapping gesture as a substitute for bowing. Since then the emperors are long-gone but the gesture remains.

“Don’t know much about history, don’t know much biology…”  but I do know that China seems to have more available manpower than other countries. This abundance of manpower leads to jobs which, in other countries, are reserved for special “upper-class” services, being very common.
A few examples I’ve seen so far (and I’ve only been here for three days!):
1. Elevator Ladies - You can occassionally see these in very posh european buildings. In Beijing, I’ve seen more elevators with them than without them - both in apartment buildings and in shopping malls. This job, for those who aren’t familiar with it, involves a person who’s sole responsibility is pressing the buttons of an elevator. So instead of entering the elevator and pressing the button which says “9″ on it, you enter the elevator and say “9″ and she presses it for you. I admit that this is an advantage when the elevator is packed and you can’t seem to reach the button (the elevator lady always stands/sits next to the button) because instead of having to bug someone to press the button for you, you can ask the person who’s job it actually is. But that’s about it.
2. Parking Lot attendants - These are people who’s job is to tell cars where to park in the parking lot. Today I saw a multi-storie parking lot (belonging to a mall) and each floor had at least four of these running around (in my sight), if not more. This does make finding a parking space a bit more easier but frankly I think that most car drivers are perfectly capable of finding these spaces themselves.
3. Private Drivers - Cars are still expensive in China. This is a combined result of cars actually being pretty expensive (compared to the average salary) and a hefty tax imposed by the government. To this you should add the fact that to drive most “good” out-of-city roads you have to pay a toll, plus some extra for parking.. you get the idea. If you buy a car, it means you’re pretty well off. And if you’ve spent so much money, what’s an extra bit of dough to keep a full-time driver on your payroll? It’s like a speaking GPS navigator only it can drive the car by itself and it can wait in the car while you’re buying cigarettes.

I’ve never really understood how to use Chinese names. I know it sounds weird, it would sound weird to me had I heard it from someone else, but it’s true. In Israel it’s very simple - my name is Ori Maoz, which means that almost always I’d be addressed as “Ori”. Practically everyone is addressed on a first name basis, including in situations such as students approaching their university professors. In the United States it might be a bit different - “Ori” to people familiar to me, and ocassionally “Mr. Maoz” in more formal situations.
Chinese names are composed of a family name (the first word) and a given name (the next one or two words). The given name is rarely used - usually it is used intimately, by family members and close friends. Sometimes the full name (all two or three words) is used when addressing a person. Often the surname is used, with an addition of either “small” or “old”: in my case it could be “Small Maoz”. The rules of when to use “small” and when to use “old” are not too simple themselves, and depend on both the age of the speaker and the age of the person addressed. Yesterday I’ve met a driver called “Small Zhou”, he seemed to be in his mid-fourties. When I later asked when would “Small Zhou” turn into “Old Zhou” I was answered with laughter.
Lin herself is actually called “Lin Qian” - in other words, while Lin is actually her surname I use it as her given name. This is due to her (wise) decision, when she came to Israel, to present herself just with her surname - her given name is a bit difficult to pronounce in Hebrew. I’ve gotten quite used to calling her Lin and was only peripherally aware of her full name. Of course, now that her family is here (she’s not the only Lin!) this can pose a slight problem.
Another weird thing about Chinese names is their prevailant use of honorifics. When studying simple Chinese texts, it had always seemed anachronistic when “Engineer Wang” was speaking with “Schoolmaster Zhang”. But meeting Lin’s mother and older brother, I was surprised to hear that her mother is called “Teacher Hu” and her brother called “Manager Lin”. Note that this is not how they’re called in formal occasions, this is how they are addressed by their friends! This is even though Teacher Hu is quite old and hasn’t taught for many years (Manager Lin is still a manager, through). Maybe I should adopt myself some honorific… I’m thinking of “Emperor Maoz”.

In one of the second-year Chinese courses in my university we’ve studied, throughout the year, a series of short texts - the first of which was called “dao le beijing” (”Arrived at Beijing”). These texts tell the story of an American student who came to Beijing to study Chinese at some university. Unfortunately, most of what he does in the texts is complain - starting from how he is cheated by food vendors, through how the dormitories don’t have air conditioning, all the way to how public toilets never have toilet paper.
To me, Beijing gives a very different first impression. Even memories from two years ago seem slightly off. People always seem to treat foreigners fairly (usually it seems as if they’re just shy of us), most places do have air conditioning, and public toilets are abundant - much more common than what I would expect to find back in Israel (franky, in Israel, when I’m in a public place such as downtown I simply don’t expect to find a toilet). I’m also amazed at the size of the city. I have a map of Beijing, and simple bus rides from point A to point B take way longer than they should (even taking traffic into account), probably because the map scale is much smaller than the scale I am used to. Other than that, public transport is pretty convenient (as usual in Asia).
I am getting the best hospitality I could ask from both Lin and her family. As fitting of Chinese, this hospitality includes stuffing me full of food - dumplings (jiaozi) yesterday evening when I arrived and peking duck (kaoya) today at lunch. Lin herself is vegetarian, a fact that her Chinese family has never quite gotten used to, so they seem overjoyed that finally someone is eating meat (”Lin’s friends”, as she to call it) and drinking beer with them. I’ve already been invited to two more family events later this week…
Unfortunately I don’t have a camera yet. I plan to buy one here in the near future, so you’d have to wait for a while for pictures.